Tolstoy's aristocratic nature is, above all, responsible for the fact that his whole art and thought are rooted in the idea of the physical, the organic and the natural. Dostoevsky's spiritualism, his speculative mind, his dynamic, dialectical mode of thinking, can be traced back just as definitely to his bourgeois descent and plebeian uprootedness. The aristocrat owes his position to his mere existence, his birth, his race, whereas the plebeian owes it to his talent, his personal ability and achievements.